“You astonish me, aunt!  You oughtn’t to allow it—­I shan’t allow it, I assure you.”

The listeners laughed gaily.

“My dear Irene,” said her aunt, “Mr. Otway will be much flattered, I’m sure.  Hut his examination comes on very soon, and he was telling us only yesterday that he didn’t want to lose an hour if he could help it.”

“He’ll lose a good many hours before long, at this rate.  Silly fellow!  That’s not the way to do well at an exam!  I must counsel him for his soul’s good, I must, indeed.  Will he dine here to-night?”

“No doubt.”

“And make all haste to get away when dinner is over,” said Olga, with a smile.

“Then we won’t let him.  He shall tell us all about the Member of Parliament; and then all about his famous father.  I undertake to keep him talking till ten.”

“Then, poor fellow, he’ll have to work all night to make it up.”

“Indeed, no!  I shall expressly forbid it.  What a shocking thing if he died here, and it got into the papers!  Aunt, do consider; they would call you his landlady!”

Mrs. Hannaford reddened whilst laughing, and the girl saw that her joke was not entirely relished, but she could never resist the temptation to make fun of certain prejudices.

“And when you give your evidence,” she went on, “the coroner will remark that if the influence of a lady so obviously sweet and right-feeling and intelligent could not avail to save the poor youth, he was plainly destined to a premature end.”

At which Mrs. Hannaford again laughed and reddened, but this time with gratification.

If Irene sometimes made a mistake, no one could have perceived it more quickly, and more charmingly have redeemed the slip.

CHAPTER IV

When Piers Otway got back to Ewell, about four o’clock, he felt the beginning of a headache.  The day of excitement might have accounted for it, but in the last few weeks it had been too common an experience with him, a warning, naturally, against his mode of life, and of course unheeded.  On reaching the house, he saw and heard no one; the door stood open, and he went straight up to his room.

He had only one, which served him for study and bedchamber.  In front of the window stood a large table, covered with his books and papers, and there, on the blotting pad, lay a letter which had arrived for him since his departure this morning.  It came, he saw, from his father.  He took it up eagerly, and was tearing the envelope when his eye fell on something that stayed his hand.